[stammie]

I don't think this is a new problem, Apple must've shifted thousands of ATV2's because they could be jailbroken and XBMC with various copyright infringing addons could be installed on them.
Unfortunately there are unscrupulous people who will always try to make a fast buck from the gullible on the back of other peoples work, you only have to look at the stupid prices ATV2's are selling on ebay for now to see this,
at the mpment it is the easily available Android boxes that the unscrupulous ones are using.

I think its a bit much saying XBMC is becoming a piracy system in most new users eyes, some sure, but I think its probably a bit insulting to many new visitors here to see a headline like that.

Dodgy people selling boxes at an inflated price with free software installed is not just an XBMC problem, here in the UK there's a little media streamer called the NOW TV box, its basically just a rebranded Roku LT with many less apps available, I see people selling these boxes with Plex preinstalled for a 150% or more mark up,
its a ridiculously easy job to get Plex installed on one of these, even the most non savvy technophobe could do it in less than 5 minutes after a quick Google search but there are quite a few folks around willing to rip people off to do it, as they do with XBMC, its not right but in the world we live in some people will always take advantage of others generosity.
I'd rather a few shysters make a few quid than the good folks at XBMC decide they have to shut up shop or go to a closed system.

[User 146225]

NOW TV box are not basically rebranded Roku's, they are SKY tvs boxes for streaming SKY tv content. Not available through anything else. Totally different to this.

I wasnt talking about people coming on to these forums seeing xbmc as a piracy tools.

Most new users of xbmc, especially say, last 6 months, have come to it through a pre-config setup bought on ebay or something similar. They are the ones who see xbmc and dodgy add-ons one of the same.

Dont think anyone wants a closed system, no on is advocating it.

Like i said previously, there is no problem to be fixed, no issue to be resolved, just a discussion on the current perception of xbmc,

[un1versal]

Like i said previously, there is no problem to be fixed, no issue to be resolved, just a discussion on the current perception of xbmc,

Why does it need to be discussed? There is nothing to discuss afaik.

My current perception of XBMC is that there's far too many ppl using it that shouldn't be using it at all, simply because XBMC isnt for everyone.

Threads like this only serve one purpose and that is to get irate ppl and get ppl annoyed, discussing this is utterly pointless as you noted so eloquently on what I quoted from you.

[User 146225]

Why does it need to be discussed? There is nothing to discuss afaik.

My current perception of XBMC is that there's far too many ppl using it that shouldn't be using it at all, simply because XBMC isnt for everyone.

Threads like this only serve one purpose and that is to get irate ppl and get ppl annoyed, discussing this is utterly pointless as you noted so eloquently on what I quoted from you.

I started this thread as personal rant, which brought people to discuss own their own views.
Isn't this is what this section of the xbmc forums are for, discussion?
Yes, it will make some people annoyed, most, if not all, discussions on any subject will have people expressing differing views. It shouldn't stop people discussing.

And no, threads like this are not here to serve one purpose. Just because it may make you irate and annoyed doesn't mean other people who have discussed feel exactly like you.

By all means, if the mods think the thread is pointless and serves little purpose to the discussions of xbmc, they are welcome to delete.

[User 146225]

sorry uNiversal , my reply to you, on re-reading, is a bit abrupt.

my appologies

[un1versal]

I started this thread as personal rant, which brought people to discuss own their own views.

Yes and you say this thread isnt serving one purpose to get irate and passionate arguments and flame wars? When you started with it exactly

Isn't this is what this section of the xbmc forums are for, discussion?

You are welcome to discuss whatever, I never said you couldnt or shouldnt, I merely stated my views on it and they clearly offend you in some manner.

And no, threads like this are not here to serve one purpose. Just because it may make you irate and annoyed doesn't mean other people who have discussed feel exactly like you.

Then again it may not and doesn't. you are frustrated and welcome to vent though Im not sure any forums are good for that?

The only feeling I have expressed is that there are many ppl using xbmc that shouldn't. Unfortunatly XBMC popularity attracts all sorts of opportunistic unsavoury and unscrupulous characters..

Ultimately You already said everything and since it is your thread and its served its ranting purpose, I see no point in discussing the discussion of discussing nothing at all. Though clearly I am humouring you.

* un1versal sits back with some popcorn waiting for the show to begin.

[nickr]

I think the unfortunate thing is that the piracy reputation will prevent the netflixes and amazons of this world taking xbmc seriously and producing official addons.

Thanks to the OP for starting this thought provoking discussion.

[ursli]

I do think the piracy problem is a home made one by the industry. There is clearly demand for content, there is also clearly a willingness to pay to get it fast and without much of a hassle, just look at all the premium one click hosters or Usenet providers. The music industry took it's time but they slowly understand that you can't compete with pirated content if you put restrictive DRM measures up, making it harder for the people who actually want to pay for content. There's plenty of alternatives these days offering paid for music in formats that any electronic device can play back without the user needing to do anything but copy it there. Make it easily accessible on all the systems a consumer uses and people gladly fork out cash.

The Movie/TV industry is still in denial it seems, the internet knows no boundaries, why restrict content to certain countries, why make it hard for us consumers to get the content we're looking for. I still can't get Netflix, Hulu or Amazon prime (prime is finally arriving here in a few days, I don't know how the content will differ to the US one though) in my country without considerable effort on my end. And even if I would go into the grey area that is VPN and US credit card informations I won't be able to get the content to my Linux HTPC (and on XBMC) without even more effort. And the industry is wondering why there is a pirate problem? I can get my US TV fix a lot easier if I just look somewhere else.

Of course there will always be people pirating stuff just because they can, but for every pirate there must be somebody with cash sitting in their hand waiting for a reasonably priced service that is serving content the way it should be served, hassle free.

This probably doesn't exactly fit in here but I had to get it off my chest.

[Platypus2]

I do think the piracy problem is a home made one by the industry. There is clearly demand for content, there is also clearly a willingness to pay to get it fast and without much of a hassle, just look at all the premium one click hosters or Usenet providers. The music industry took it's time but they slowly understand that you can't compete with pirated content if you put restrictive DRM measures up, making it harder for the people who actually want to pay for content. There's plenty of alternatives these days offering paid for music in formats that any electronic device can play back without the user needing to do anything but copy it there. Make it easily accessible on all the systems a consumer uses and people gladly fork out cash.

The Movie/TV industry is still in denial it seems, the internet knows no boundaries, why restrict content to certain countries, why make it hard for us consumers to get the content we're looking for. I still can't get Netflix, Hulu or Amazon prime (prime is finally arriving here in a few days, I don't know how the content will differ to the US one though) in my country without considerable effort on my end. And even if I would go into the grey area that is VPN and US credit card informations I won't be able to get the content to my Linux HTPC (and on XBMC) without even more effort. And the industry is wondering why there is a pirate problem? I can get my US TV fix a lot easier if I just look somewhere else.

Of course there will always be people pirating stuff just because they can, but for every pirate there must be somebody with cash sitting in their hand waiting for a reasonably priced service that is serving content the way it should be served, hassle free.

This probably doesn't exactly fit in here but I had to get it off my chest.

I completely agree with that. The Movie/TV industry still has a lot of catching up to do, the music industry has done very well in comparison imho. I think the situation is getting better a lot quicker in the US than it is in other countries as well. Here in the UK, I'm pretty sure that Movie/TV digital downloads comes down to 2 places, one is hardly known and the other...well...is iTunes. The only two available here also 'protect' with annoying DRM. It seems like digital downloads might actually never properly appear here, everything is/will be just streaming. What I don't get is how iTunes must have a 'monopoly' in digital downloads of Movie/TV here and yet nothing is done about that - probably because people believe that Netflix or other streaming services are alternatives, which they aren't.

I also find it absurd that Bluray's (and for good reason DVD's) are much cheaper than digital downloads here. Maybe not by a large margin right after release but certainly after a few months. I get why physical stock obviously becomes cheaper overtime, but why does that not happen for digital downloads to the same degree as Blu-ray's. You can pick a £10 film from iTunes up on Blu-ray for £2-4 from amazon quite a lot of the time.

Think of it this way, today, wouldn't it be crazy to say that buying a song on physical CD was cheaper than buying it digitally? Why is that the case for music but buying a Blu-ray and ripping it ourselves, is cheaper than digitally downloading it? - not to mention the large amount of extras you gain, no DRM AND a physical backup copy

[awp0]

I know it's getting O/T, but I agree that the content owners make it so horrendously difficult and restrictive that it almost removes any feeling of guilt when turning to piracy.

Example 1: Until very recently you needed to be on a premium Comcast service package (for something like minimum $60/month) in order to have the "privilege" to subscribe to HBO for another $15/month, when all you want is to watch a season of Game of Thrones. That is calculated and completely ridiculous. And as a consumer with no reasonable option in my area other than Comcast, I have no recourse.

Example 2: Comcast limited basic customers (like myself) have had almost zero access to live Olympics. NBC (owned by Comcast) offers a good amount of live web-based streaming, but only to customers on more expensive cable plans, despite the fact that limited basic includes NBC. So for me to watch live coverage of Ted Ligety ripping it up the other day, I had to use a proxy service to make it look like I'm a Canadian so that I could stream the (free) Canadian coverage. Probably not legal, but frankly I do not care because I feel like I'm being unfairly treated by this super-corp. I don't think I should be prevented from watching my country's publicly-funded olympic team just because I choose not to pay Comcast for some premium channel lineup comprised of 95% garbage.

Sorry. Rant over. Piracy has many levels to it IMO.

[awp0]

Example 3, ripped from today's headlines:
http://gizmodo.com/netflix-quality-sucks...1528153690

[Nostrodamus]

I bought one of those Android boxes, supposedly pre-loaded with XBMC plus the addons. The thing never did work right, in it's original configuration. I tried various combinations of modified Android firmware, modified XBMC or both... never really worked well at all. Of course, then I moved on to the Linux builds, and I even had to try a few of them out before I found one worth keeping.

Of course this means I had to find all those addons that I had before... and then found out that some of them weren't all that useful anyway.

I'm happy with XBMC on this box, now that I've found a way to make it work better. Sure I could have just as easily put OpenElec on an old computer, but this way it's a lot quieter, and takes up less space. Probably even runs a little better. Yeah, I could have got a Roku or something like that, but where's the fun in that? I'd recommend something like that to my technologically challenged parents, but I'd prefer something I can customize a little and run what I want on it.... provided I can find a way to do so.

As far as the assault on net neutrality, geoblocking and all that, I find it all a little ridiculous. The internet is world wide. I can't think of any valid reason why I shouldn't be able to watch the Olympics on CBC, or the BBC News, or why somebody on that side of the pond shouldn't be able to watch Hulu. Yeah, I could see where pay-services might be a hassle for somebody if they had to convert all the dollars/euros/pounds or whatever, but they could start with opening up the free stuff already.

[tential]

I do think the piracy problem is a home made one by the industry. There is clearly demand for content, there is also clearly a willingness to pay to get it fast and without much of a hassle, just look at all the premium one click hosters or Usenet providers. The music industry took it's time but they slowly understand that you can't compete with pirated content if you put restrictive DRM measures up, making it harder for the people who actually want to pay for content. There's plenty of alternatives these days offering paid for music in formats that any electronic device can play back without the user needing to do anything but copy it there. Make it easily accessible on all the systems a consumer uses and people gladly fork out cash.

The Movie/TV industry is still in denial it seems, the internet knows no boundaries, why restrict content to certain countries, why make it hard for us consumers to get the content we're looking for. I still can't get Netflix, Hulu or Amazon prime (prime is finally arriving here in a few days, I don't know how the content will differ to the US one though) in my country without considerable effort on my end. And even if I would go into the grey area that is VPN and US credit card informations I won't be able to get the content to my Linux HTPC (and on XBMC) without even more effort. And the industry is wondering why there is a pirate problem? I can get my US TV fix a lot easier if I just look somewhere else.

Of course there will always be people pirating stuff just because they can, but for every pirate there must be somebody with cash sitting in their hand waiting for a reasonably priced service that is serving content the way it should be served, hassle free.

This probably doesn't exactly fit in here but I had to get it off my chest.

As the movie industry catches up to what consumers demand, piracy will lessen. People I know who torrented EVERYTHING, now are purchasing movies/tv shows again. They're doing it through the cheaper and more convenient methods that now have come about due to piracy though.

Piracy has pushed the industry to modernize. I do believe though that Piracy isn't too big of a problem (In places where anti piracy laws are enforced). At this point it's confined to a small minority of those that know how. The general average person is still very confused.

---

I bought one of those Android boxes, supposedly pre-loaded with XBMC plus the addons. The thing never did work right, in it's original configuration. I tried various combinations of modified Android firmware, modified XBMC or both... never really worked well at all. Of course, then I moved on to the Linux builds, and I even had to try a few of them out before I found one worth keeping.

Of course this means I had to find all those addons that I had before... and then found out that some of them weren't all that useful anyway.

I'm happy with XBMC on this box, now that I've found a way to make it work better. Sure I could have just as easily put OpenElec on an old computer, but this way it's a lot quieter, and takes up less space. Probably even runs a little better. Yeah, I could have got a Roku or something like that, but where's the fun in that? I'd recommend something like that to my technologically challenged parents, but I'd prefer something I can customize a little and run what I want on it.... provided I can find a way to do so.

As far as the assault on net neutrality, geoblocking and all that, I find it all a little ridiculous. The internet is world wide. I can't think of any valid reason why I shouldn't be able to watch the Olympics on CBC, or the BBC News, or why somebody on that side of the pond shouldn't be able to watch Hulu. Yeah, I could see where pay-services might be a hassle for somebody if they had to convert all the dollars/euros/pounds or whatever, but they could start with opening up the free stuff already.

That's very simple actually. It has to do with advertising dollars for free stuff. For Pay services it makes zero sense actually. For Amazon Prime, if I'm a member I should be able to watch no matter what country I'm in. But for free things, it's based off the advertising. Advertising to a person in Zimbabwe isn't as important as advertising to a person in the USA. So as hulu, a "free" content provider, I'm going to block Zimbabwe because I'm only getting paid .000000000001 cents for every ad I show them, but the bandwidth to show them a full television show costs me .0001 cents. So I lose money every time they watch something.

[MaDef]

I'm curious, so all of you have legitimately purchased all of your media and just made images of them and put them in your libraries?

That was the whole reason for me checking out XBMC, I have hundreds of DVD's and CD's I've bought over the years, It's very convenient having digital copies available to all tv's in the house, not to mention all the space saved since I store the "hard copies" in the attic once they've been added to the NAS.

[Offler]

I'm curious, so all of you have legitimately purchased all of your media and just made images of them and put them in your libraries?

Yes. I have more reasons for this.

a) Images of DVDs are stored within my portable system and I access them anytime.
b) Original DVDs are securely stored, and thus cannot be damaged by normal usage.
c) DVD with good movie can be bought from 3 dollars.